Flag of Samoa

Below are some links and information about relief efforts to the island nation of Samoa. Support can come in many shapes and forms – from donations to forwarding links. Help however you can and know your support is appreciated!

United States

Red Cross
Donate directly to the Red Cross.

Washington, DC
Tsunami Relief Fundraiser
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
8pm-11pm
24 R ST NE

Honolulu, Hawai’i
American Samoa and Samoa Tsunami Relief Effort
We’re accepting food item donations at the American Samoa Office of Honolulu. Please drop off canned goods, bags of rice and bottled water at the office – 1427 Dilingham Blvd Suite 210, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817.

Northern California
First Samoan Congregational Christian Church in Sacramento
251 South Ave.
Sacramento , CA 95838
Office: 916-922-2220
They are collecting clothes, shoes, medical supplies, and other necessities for the victims of the Tsunami in Samoa.

Samoa

Kevin (a former Peace Corps volunteer now living in Samoa) and his wife Taialofa (the daughter of two Samoa RPCVs also living in Samoa) have set up an http://www.facebook.com/l/13498;www.rawshakti.com/tsunamirelief.php. They are using the money to buy food supplies and delivering them to the affected areas.
This is a quick, immediate way to donate and you can trust that all the money will go to those in need:

New Zealand and Australia

RELIEF COLLECTIONS TO BEGIN ON BOARD PACIFIC BLUE AND POLYNESIAN BLUE FLIGHTS MONEY, FOOD, BLANKETS, CLOTHING DONATIONS AT AIRPORT CHECK-INSNew Zealanders and Australians who would like to assist and donate clothing, blankets, or tinned food can drop donations off at Pacific Blue check-in counters at airports in New Zealand and Australia. The donations will be freighted to Samoa by Polynesian Blue for distribution by government or aid agencies.

Auckland, NZ
Community Garage sale. October 10th, 8am until 4pm at Pakuranga Baptist Church on Te Irirangi Drive in Auckland! All the money collected goes to the Red Cross!

Click link for postings about fundraising events and also requesting help in organizing various fundraising events, with all of the money collected to go to helping the victims of the tsunamis.

BBE Island Freight company in Auckland, NZ, is sending a container FOR FREE to Samoa where you can send boxes of non-perishable foods/clothing/tarp/blankets/tents/bedding, etc.. This container is going directly to Red Cross SAMOA, which is good to know.
Pick-up Available in the Weekends (contact Tina-0210596164 or Adelle-02120056842)

OR

Drop off at 8 Kingsford-Smith Place Airport Oaks from 8-5 weekdays. or 4 Edwards Rd Grey Lynn in the weekends. October 17th is cut-off date for shipment!

Red Cross NZ and AUS
NZ Red Cross

Australian Red Cross

Fa’afetai tele lava to our Samoan brothers and sisters, PCVs, RPCVs, friends and families!

Vacancy Announcement for Training Manager (TM)

United States Peace Corps in Guyana

Basic Functions of the Position:

Manage the design, delivery and evaluation of competency-based training to prepare Peace Corps Trainees for two years of volunteer service in Guyana. Coordinate and manage the development and implementation of the training curriculum, which includes Pre-Service Training, as well as all in-service trainings for Volunteers throughout the year.  Manage relevant staff and budgets associated with training programs.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

• Guides program and training staff in the design, monitoring, evaluation and revision of a comprehensive set of technical, core, language, cross-cultural, sector, and personal health/safety competencies which will prepare Trainees and Volunteers to effectively serve with their community counterparts.
• Develops and implements a community-based training program based on competencies that integrate technical areas, language, cross-cultural, and core topics.
• Manages a team of trainers, resource persons, resource volunteers, and staff in the implementation of training curriculum and goals.
• Develops and monitors a training budget in collaboration with the PTO and Administrative Officer.
• Oversees the planning and preparation of training activities and events.
• Oversees the development of all training documents/reports and provides quality feedback to the training team in a timely manner that allows for integrated planning and evaluation.
• Facilitates large and small group training activities, modeling a variety of non-formal, adult education techniques in the delivery of training.
• Conducts training sessions for many core competencies and selected sector/technical competencies.
• Guides/directs the evaluation of trainees’ progress, including written assessments, interviews, and staff roundtable meetings.
• Serves as member of the PC Guyana Team.

Qualifications – Education/Experience:

• University bachelor degree in adult education, human resources management, or a development related field OR 4 years of equivalent experience in adult, non-formal education required.

Qualifications – Required Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes:

• Experience researching, designing, and delivering a multi-component training program for adults.
• Demonstrated, management, administration, or coordination of a training program, including personnel management.
• Knowledge of train-the-trainer approaches, group dynamics and facilitation techniques for education programs.
• Must be a very resourceful and creative individual capable of designing flexible options to respond to training needs.
• Demonstrated facilitation skills and ability to make presentations comfortably in front of a group.
• Experience managing budgets and expenses in a high accountability environment.
• Must be computer literate and proficient in Microsoft Office products.
• Written and spoken fluency in English.
• Job requires brief to extended periods of in-country travel for training.

Desired Qualifications:

• Familiarity with Guyanese culture, communities, and geography.
• Licensed driver.

Position Salary: Salary negotiable based on previous experience and qualifications.

Position Duration: 1-year contract position renewable upon satisfactory performance.

Application Process/Deadline: Submit resume with cover letter and two reference contacts via email to pcgy_jobvacancies@peacecorps.gov no later than Wednesday, August 19, 2009, or mail them to: Peace Corps Guyana, TM Vacancy, P.O. Box 101192, Georgetown.  Proposed start date: Monday, September 14, 2009.

Additional Information: For additional general information regarding the Peace Corps, please visit our website at: www.peacecorps.gov.

Program and Training Specialist – Education

Applications are invited from suitably qualified persons to fill the position of Program and Training Specialist for an international agency. Position will be filled as soon as a suitable candidate has been identified.

Job Summary:

• Works closely with the Program and Training Staff to design, coordinate, implement, and evaluate a professional training sequence for international volunteers to work effectively in the Basic Education Project.
• Works to establish a productive and dynamic relationship international volunteers and local Guyanese education service providers. Provides a thorough orientation to local Guyanese education service providers, as well as ongoing guidance and support to international volunteers.
• Provides technical and non–technical logistical support to Program and Training Staff.

Job Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in education, project management, community development or related field.
• Three years progressively responsible experience in primary, literacy and/or life skills education.
• Experience in information technology programs and community development is preferred.
• Experience working within the varying levels of the Ministry of Education’s System in Guyana is preferred.
• Experience training adults is required.
• Ability to communicate effectively (reading, writing, speaking) in English.
• Ability to work efficiently and effectively.

This position will require up to 70% in-country travel.

A letter of interest and a copy of resume/curriculum vitae should be sent as soon as possible to the following postal address or hand-delivered to the following street address:

Post to: Hand-deliver to:

PM – Education                                                                   PM – Education

P.O. Box 101192                                                                U.S. Peace Corps

Georgetown, GUYANA                                                     33A Barrack Street

Kingston, Georgetown.

Alternatively, applications may be sent electronically to: pcgy_jobvacancies@peacecorps.gov.

From February 23 to March 2, 2009, thousands among the 195,000 Peace Corps Volunteers who have served over the years in more than 139 countries will share their overseas experiences with schools and community groups throughout the United States.

Designated as Peace Corps Week, this weeklong celebration marks the 48th anniversary of the Peace Corps, founded on March 1, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing it as a new government agency.

By giving presentations during Peace Corps Week, Peace Corps Volunteers help Americans better understand the people and cultures they’ve experienced, and the many benefits of service. Additionally, by making presentations in classrooms, Volunteers help create greater global awareness among students. For more of this article, click here.

For a complete list of Peace Corps Week activities across the United States, click here.

(http://www.peacecorps.gov/)

The Peace Corps is proud to announce the top colleges and universities on their annual list of “Peace Corps Top Colleges and Universities” for 2009.

For the third consecutive year, the University of Washington is No. 1 on the undergraduate list in the large schools category, with 104 alumni serving as Peace Corps Volunteers. The University of Colorado-Boulder has risen dramatically from sixth place last year to claim the No. 2 in the large schools category, with 102 Volunteers. Michigan State University has also risen up two spots from fifth place last year to take the No. 3 rank among the country’s large schools, with 89 currently-serving Volunteers.

The complete list can be found here.

An RPCV that served in Guyana represented at a Peace Corps Fair in Arizona, she has this to day about the event:

 

The PC fair was a smashing success!  I printed some of the photos out for the poster and had the rest of the pics with captions in a slideshow running on the laptop…I only took a few photos at the PC fair because I was so busy the whole time answering all kind of questions about the Peace Corps in Guyana…Well, here’s a picture of me and the table… sorry the photo is a little dark.

As we slowed to a crawl from well above 100km/h I looked up from my work to see what had caused this interruption of incessant swerving back and forth. A half a dozen young boys were aggressively urging their 50 or so cattle and sheep across a narrow bridge, as this road was the only way across the now high waters of the small creek. I took the opportunity to glance around and absorb the beauty of the Ethiopian Rift Valley. Here, about a hundred kilometers south of Addis Ababa, a passerby can get a quick glimpse of some of the most beautiful nature that Earth has to offer. A group of ten storks stood proud and tall atop a lush, flat-topped acacia tree, a small bird with the brightest red color I have ever seen rose up from the grass near the road side, and the green stretched for miles, and obvious sign that there has been adequate rainfall this year.

Further south we go, the green grass and twisted acacia trees begin to be accompanied by small shrubs and fields of corn as the dry season climate here is a little kinder than just a 100km to the north. Different types of trees appear on the roadside, some even with flowers. People walk this way and that carrying goods to or from the markets. Sheep and cows eager for the grass that is always greener on the other side daringly try to cross the road – one of the nicest and busiest roads in Ethiopia running over 800km from Addis to the Kenyan border at a town called Moyale. Small villages and decent sized towns occasionally force vehicles to slow down, but the accelerator promptly hits the floor as the last of the homes are passed and the long stretch of smooth asphalt runs endlessly in front of us with mountains in the distance on every horizon that just never seem to get any closer.

Even further south now the small shrubs give way to bigger ones and the acacia trees begin to give way to warca trees which stand with the elegance of an old oak. Fences begin appearing around the houses as lumber is more readily available with the much larger number of trees. The leaves of false banana trees reach over top of the fences, a tell tale sign that we are now in the land of Ethiopia’s number one crop – coffee. Pictures of legendary reggae star Bob Marley begin appearing on the roadside as well as the associated colors of red, yellow, green and black surrounding the Lion of Judah, the proud symbol of the Rastafarians. This means we are also fast approaching Sashemene, the once large, but now small, plot of land given to the Rastas by Emperor Haile Selaisse I, the man worshiped as a God by the Rastafarian religion. And then it is behind us.

It becomes apparent at about this point that we are now in the mountains that not so long ago appeared unreachable. Tree species too numerous to mention intermix with the coffee that is endemic to the highlands of Ethiopia. Even in the vehicle the air has a different feel, lighter, cooler, damper. The tall eucalyptus trees, given as a gift to Ethiopia by Australia in the late 1800’s and now everywhere, give off a strong scent as a light mist begins to fall. Up a slight incline and now fully encased in clouds we are again forced to a crawl as visibility is next to nothing. Another few minutes and its clear as if there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky all day.

As we begin our descent down the mountains the sprawling, red savanna which is Borena extends as far as the eye can see. We’re not going all the way there on this trip, but I can picture the familiar scenery in my head – short, twisted acacia trees intermixed with giant termite mounds which take on the red hue of the surrounding soil. Cattle by the thousands herded from one pasture to the next wherever there happens to be water at this given time.

At this point you may be asking yourself what this has to do with Peace Corps or Guyana, and I asked myself that very same question when I decided to post this here. Well, there isn’t really a huge connection other than that Ethiopia, like Guyana is an incredibly diverse place and everyone should try there best to get out and visit as many places as you can and meet as many people as possible. In doing this you may understand where the passion that Peace Corps Volunteers have comes from.

(via candysandwich.net)

Four days in New York were not nearly enough. Four days in a three-room apartment with seven other souls – six of us sharing a bedroom, all of us sharing the bath. At any given point, a dozen of us wandered the city, annoyed people on trains and talked of anything and everything.

“Do you know what I love most about your friends? Your Peace Corps friends?” I asked on the drive home, long after the sun had set and in the last leg or two of the journey.

“What?”

“They’re all flawed.”

I caught his look out of the corner of my eye and continued.

“I mean, we’re all flawed but you all know each other so well that you know the flaws and like each other anyways. That’s pretty awesome.”

“I think that’s the glue that holds us together,” he said. “None of us had anything like that before we went and we haven’t found it since.”

I was not part of it, not the Peace Corps, but they knew me tangentially and welcomed me with open arms. Literally.

“You’ve met before, why no hug?” one girl berated her boyfriend and he leaned in for a hug, all 6 foot, 7 inches of him. I spent much of the weekend in their company. More hugs followed.

Promises would flow – to meet again soon, to write, to call. Many would be broken but the intentions were true. These people knew each other, inside and out, and honestly liked each other. They would come together again and again as they had over the past couple years, their ties growing stronger with coupling and real world friendships and the formation of

their non-profit. Overlapping stories and overlapping lives.

I heard tales from their days in Guyana and their lives since. About drunkenness, defecation, and falling in love – in one couple, all three combined. I heard about falling down and rising up. I knew the characters and most of the places.

I scanned through pictures and asked for names, settings, stories, when he came back for Christmas. I visited twice. I listened. Talked. Shared.

Some of the volunteers are part of my life now, my neighbors, my friends. Others have visited and stayed with my brother. Stayed with me.

I questioned my brother on the way home about jobs and plans and stories half heard. I reviewed the faces and names in my mind.

“It’s not like it matters,” I said. “I just want to know. I like your friends.”

“They’re great.”

For four days, I wished that I had joined the Peace Corps. I knew that I still could and would create my own stories, my own group, if I did, but I wanted this one: Flawed, funny, accepting and great.

Some of the boys might move upstairs. A man from Chicago and a couple from New York plan to visit before summer’s end, and I have invited myself to Argentina. With each visit, we will move farther from Guyana. The stories will grow. They will include me. Some already do.

For four days, I stopped waiting. Waiting for my car. Waiting to find out if I’m sick. Waiting for the Metro and on the Metro. Waiting for meetings to start and meetings to end and for somebody, anybody, to get to the point. Waiting for doctors and movies and lecturers. Waiting to go home and do it all again. A life on hold.

For four days, hours on the subway melted into nothingness as we were together and the journeys eclipsed the destinations. I had nowhere to go. Nothing to do. I could wake up at noon and nobody cared. I slept better in a room with five guys than I did at home upon my return.

For four days, I simply existed. I was me: flawed, human, accepted and loved. That is just the way they are.